A man who sexually abused his daughter and his cousin in separate incidents 25 years apart has been jailed for four years.
The 55-year-old Dubliner, who cannot be named to protect the anonymity of the complainants, was convicted by a Dublin Circuit Criminal Court jury following a trial last December.
He was found guilty of one count of indecently assaulting his younger cousin at an address in Dublin on a date between February 1987 and February 1990. She was aged between four and six at the time of the abuse, while he was aged between 16 and 19.
The man was also found guilty of sexually assaulting his 16-year-old daughter during a family holiday to Florida in June 2014.
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The charges carry maximum sentences of 10 and 14 years respectively.
The man, who has no previous convictions, acknowledges the verdicts but continues to protest his innocence, defence counsel Brian McInerney said.
In relation to the abuse of his cousin, a detective garda told prosecution barrister Carol Doherty that the girl was staying in the man’s family home and woke to see him coming in to her room. She said he put his hands under the covers and touched her inappropriately before leaving.
The girl was frozen in fear throughout, the court heard. When she summoned the courage to leave the room in search of the man’s mother, she found him standing in the hall outside. He told her he thought she was asleep and, feeling intimidated, she returned to bed.
In relation to the abuse of his daughter, the court heard the man separated from the girl’s mother when she was a baby and she visited him regularly. In 2014, she was invited on holiday with him and his new partner.
During the holiday, the man entered the bedroom where his daughter was sleeping, surprising a female relative of his partner who she was sharing the room with. He repeatedly said “I’m looking for my daughter” before he got into bed beside the girl and started “spooning” her and then sexually assaulted her as she lay paralysed in fear, the court heard.
When he made a comment about her private parts, the girl jumped out of bed and left the room. The defendant followed her and suggested that they go skinny-dipping “like it was a game”, the complainant told the court. She said she made a move to go to his partner’s room to speak to her, but her father’s demeanour changed and he told her to get back to bed.
In her victim impact statement, the man’s daughter said she spent years trying to maintain a relationship with her father, who went on to marry his partner and have two children with her. She said she wanted to have a relationship with her younger siblings.
“All I wanted was for my dad to be my dad and for so long I clung on to hope,” she said. “I wanted him to walk me down the aisle, I wanted him to be a loving grandfather to my children.”
She said she eventually cut all ties with her father and, as a result, no longer has contact with her younger siblings. “I feel as though I live in a constant state of grief, but I’m grieving people who are still alive.”
The first complainant told the court that when she heard what had happened to her younger relative, she felt “a strong moral obligation” to report what had happened her so that no other children would be hurt by the man.
“It’s impossible to explain the impact of child sexual abuse to a person who has not experienced it,” she said, adding that it changes one’s relationship with the world and the people in it.
She said she was assaulted at a time when people did not know how to respond, and after she disclosed the abuse there was a “terrible silence” for years.
Sentencing the man, Judge Jonathan Dunphy paid tribute to the complainants, whose statements he described as “honest, courageous and brave”. He noted they are now parents themselves and have supports in place, “but at the time, they were innocent and vulnerable”.
He said the two incidents happened many years apart, but had striking similarities in that they took place in the victim’s bed at night, involved touching the girls under their clothes and a level of “intimidatory” behaviour afterwards.
In relation to the first offence, he set a headline sentence of four years, which he reduced to two years, noting that he must treat the man as possibly being a child during the offending period. He suspended the final nine months on a number of conditions, including that the man take part in sexual offence-focused work in custody.
In relation to the second incident, he set a headline sentence of five years. He reduced this to four years and suspended the final 15 months on similar conditions.
The judge ordered that the sentences run consecutively, amounting to a total sentence of four years. He ordered the man to have no contact whatsoever with either victim.
The man’s wife was in court to support him throughout the trial and sentence process.
